Fair Work ignored HSU warnings

Fair Work Australia ignored a call in mid-2009 to “expeditiously" pursue investigations into the Health Services Union and to be prepared to refer “identified malfeasance" to the police.

The day before most of his powers and staff were transferred to Fair Work Australia as it progressively took over from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, registrar Doug Williams urged the new body in a memo to go ahead with probes into the troubled union.

The examination of the union’s national office was only upgraded from an inquiry to a full-blown investigation in March 2010, after news­paper revelations about the abuse of union funds.

The inquiry was then overseen by FWA general manager Tim Lee, a former union official and Labor appointee who was later promoted to the bench. FWA declined to hand over evidence to the police despite Mr William’s request to do so in 2009.

The final report, released in May, found 156 civil breaches by former union leader and federal MP Craig Thomson, a member of the Gillard minority government.

Last night, FWA general manager Bernadette O’Neill and lawyer Ailsa Carruthers were hauled by a Senate committee from Melbourne back to Canberra to be questioned over the memo from Mr Williams.

Opposition Workplace Relations spokesman
Eric Abetz
said the documents were a “smoking gun" in relation to FWA’s three-year inquiry into the union, which has been criticised for taking too long.

“The handover brief from Mr Williams clearly identified malfeasance, the recommendation that it be reported to police and that it be done so expeditiously," he said.

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Mr Williams, a Howard government appointee with an employer group background, wrote in the memo in 2009 that FWA should have a clear plan for referring matters to other authorities such as the police, which could “occur on the strength of discoveries which do not require further investigation".

The memo by Mr Williams, who remained registrar of the Industrial Relations Commission until the end of 2009 when the commission’s remaining work was completed, was written to the FWA officer who conducted the investigation into the HSU’s national office, Terry Nassios.

Mr Nassios, who is on extended leave from Fair Work Australia, didn’t appear before the committee on Tuesday night. But Ms O’Neill and Ms Carruthers told the committee that Mr Nassios failed to discuss his former bosses’s instructions with colleagues or pass on the information to his new superior, Mr Lee.

In the final HSU report, Mr Nassios said it was “unclear what Mr Williams sought to achieve" by the memo because the commission’s investigatory powers had shifted to Fair Work’s general manager.

“In exercising those powers from that date, I did not, and could not, accept instructions from any other person about the exercise of those powers," Mr Nassios wrote.

Ms O’Neill, who replaced Mr Lee as general manager, told the committee Mr Lee told her yesterday he had no recollection of ever seeing the memo. Ms Carruthers said it wasn’t clear in 2009 they had enough information to go to the police.

“We actually didn’t have a lot of evidence in front of us at that point of time," she told the hearing.

The opposition indicated last night it would attempt to force Mr Nassios to appear before the committee to answer questions over the investigation, especially as he has been assisting KPMG with a report into FWA over the inquiry while on leave.

Both Ms O’Neill and Ms Carruthers attended the committee hearing for five hours on Monday, but the memo, which was requested by the committee, wasn’t made available until late on Monday night, which the opposition said was a ploy to avoid questioning.

The final report into the HSU was given to NSW and Victorian police in April by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, not Fair Work Australia. FWA officials say flaws in the Registered Organisations Act are the reason they could not give information to the police. Workplace Relations Minister
Bill Shorten
will introduce legislation on Thursday to address the deficiencies.

Mr Williams has publicly criticised the time it took for the industrial tribunal to complete its report, a fact conceded by Ms O’Neill last night. In questioning she agreed with a statement by Senator Abetz they “hadn’t done a very good job".